Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in

Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...

and operated by the namesake company

Yahoo Inc. Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manag ...

, which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by

Apollo Global Management Apollo Global Management, Inc. is an American global private-equity firm. It provides investment management and invests in credit, private equity, and real assets. As of March 31, 2022, the company had $512 billion of assets under management, ...

and 10% by Verizon Communications. It provides a web portal,

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

Yahoo Search Yahoo! Search is a Yahoo! internet search provider that uses Microsoft's Bing search engine to power results, since 2009, apart from four years with Google until 2019. Originally, "Yahoo! Search" referred to a Yahoo!-provided interface that se ...

, and related services, including My Yahoo!,

Yahoo Mail Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! ...

, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and its advertising platform, Yahoo! Native. Yahoo was established by

Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. As of February 2022, Yang has a net worth ...

and

David Filo David Robert Filo (born April 20, 1966) is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder of Yahoo! with Jerry Yang. His Filo Server Program, written in the C programming language, was the server-side software used to dynamically serve ...

in January 1994 and was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s. However, usage declined in the late 2000s as some services discontinued and it lost market share to Facebook and Google.

History

Founding

In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, when they created a website named "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web". The site was a human-edited web directory, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In March 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!" and became known as the

Yahoo Directory The Yahoo! Directory was a web directory which at one time rivaled DMOZ in size. The directory was Yahoo!'s first offering and started in 1994 under the name Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web. When Yahoo! changed its main results to c ...

.The Yahoo Directory — Once The Internet's Most Important Search Engine — Is To Close
September 26, 2014, retrieved on June 3, 2017 The "yahoo.com" domain was registered on January 18, 1995. The word "yahoo" is a backronym for " Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle" or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom", and the term "officious", rather than being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo database while surfing from work. However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the slang definition of a "yahoo" (used by college students in David Filo's native Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unsophisticated, rural Southerner): "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." This meaning derives from the Yahoo race of fictional beings from ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...

''. Yahoo was incorporated on March 2, 1995. In 1995, a

function, called

, was introduced. This allowed users to search Yahoo Directory. Yahoo soon became the first popular online directory and search engine on the World Wide Web.

Expansion

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Yahoo became a public company via an initial public offering in April 1996 and its stock price rose 600% within two years. Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal, putting it in competition with services including

Excite Excitation, excite, exciting, or excitement may refer to: * Excitation (magnetic), provided with an electrical generator or alternator * Excite Ballpark, located in San Jose, California * Excite (web portal), web portal owned by IAC * Electron ex ...

, Lycos, and

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

. By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users, and the human-edited Yahoo Directory the most popular search engine, receiving 95 million page views per day, triple that of rival Excite. It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Yahoo began offering free e-mail from October 1997 after the acquisition of RocketMail, which was then renamed to

. In 1998, Yahoo replaced AltaVista as the crawler-based search engine underlying the Directory with

Inktomi Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, ...

. Yahoo's two biggest acquisitions were made in 1999: Geocities for $3.6 billion and

Broadcast.com Broadcast.com was an Internet radio company founded as AudioNet in September 1995 by Cameron Christopher Jaeb. Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban later led the organization and eventually sold to Yahoo! on April 1, 1999, for $5.7 billion, making it the ...

for $5.7 billion. Its stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble, closing at an all-time high of $118.75/share on January 3, 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $8.11 on September 26, 2001. Yahoo began using Google for search in June 2000. Over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004 partly using technology from its $280 million acquisition of Inktomi in 2002. In response to Google's Gmail, Yahoo began to offer unlimited email storage in 2007. In 2008, the company laid off hundreds of people as it struggled from competition. In February 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Yahoo rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Although Microsoft increased its bid to $47 billion, Yahoo insisted on another 10%+ increase to the offer and Microsoft cancelled the offer in May 2008. Carol Bartz, who had no previous experience in Internet advertising, replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009. In September 2011, after failing to meet targets, she was fired by chairman

Roy J. Bostock Roy J. Bostock is an American investor, businessman who served as chairman of Yahoo! Inc. from January 2008 to May 2012. He currently serves on the board of directors of Delta Air Lines. From 2000 to 2001 he served as chairman of the advertisin ...

; CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company. In April 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, several key executives resigned, including

chief product officer A chief product officer (CPO), sometimes known as head of product, is a corporate title referring to an executive responsible for various product-related activities in an organization. The CPO is to the business's product what the CTO is to techno ...

Blake Irving Blake Irving is the American former Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of GoDaddy. Before coming to GoDaddy in 2013, Blake worked for Yahoo! and Microsoft where he helped develop NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, and Hotmail. Early life and ed ...

. On April 4, 2012, Yahoo announced 2,000 layoffs, or about 14% of its 14,100 workers by the end of year, expected to save around $375 million annually. In an email sent to employees in April 2012, Thompson reiterated his view that customers should come first at Yahoo. He also completely reorganized the company. On May 13, 2012, Thompson was fired and was replaced on an interim basis by Ross Levinsohn, recently appointed head of Yahoo's new Media group. Several associates of

Third Point Management Third Point Management is a New York City, New York-based hedge fund founded by Daniel S. Loeb in 1995. The firm operates as an employee-owned and SEC-registered investment advisor with approximately $16 billion in assets under management . A ...

, including Daniel S. Loeb were nominated to the

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

. Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo was at least $7.3 million. On July 15, 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo, effective July 17, 2012. In June 2013, Yahoo acquired blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, with Tumblr's CEO and founder David Karp continuing to run the site. In July 2013, Yahoo announced plans to open an office in San Francisco. On August 2, 2013, Yahoo acquired

Rockmelt Rockmelt is a discontinued proprietary social media web browser developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria based on the Google Chromium project, incorporating social media features such as Facebook chat, Twitter notifications and widgetised areas f ...

; its staff was retained, but all of its existing products were terminated. Data collated by comScore during July 2013 revealed that, during the month, more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo websites than Google; the first time that Yahoo outperformed Google since 2011. The data did not count mobile usage, nor Tumblr. Mayer also hired Katie Couric to be the anchor of a new online news operation and started an online food magazine. However, by January 2014, doubts about Mayer's progress emerged when Mayer fired her own first major hire, Henrique de Castro. On December 12, 2014, Yahoo acquired video advertising provider

BrightRoll BrightRoll was a programmatic video advertising platform that was acquired by Yahoo!. BrightRoll's video platform became Yahoo's primary video advertising marketplace and demand-side platform. The BrightRoll brand was discontinued by Verizon Medi ...

for $583 million. On November 21, 2014, Yahoo acquired Cooliris.

Decline, security breaches, and sale

By December 2015, Mayer was criticized as performance declined. Mayer was ranked as the least likable CEO in tech. On February 2, 2016, Mayer announced layoffs amounting to 15% of the Yahoo! workforce. On July 25, 2016, Verizon Communications announced the acquisition of Yahoo's core Internet business for $4.83 billion. The deal excluded Yahoo's 15% stake in Alibaba Group and 35.5% stake in

Yahoo Japan is a Japanese internet company originally formed as a joint venture between the American internet company Yahoo! (later divested by Verizon into Altaba) and the Japanese company SoftBank. It is headquartered at Kioi Tower in the Tokyo Garden Terr ...

. On February 21, 2017, as a result of the Yahoo data breaches, Verizon lowered its purchase price for Yahoo by $350 million and reached an agreement to share liabilities regarding the data breaches. On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the acquisition of Yahoo and Marissa Mayer resigned. Yahoo, AOL, and HuffPost were to continue operating under their own names, under the umbrella of a new company, Oath Inc., later called

Verizon Media Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

. The parts of the original Yahoo! Inc. which were not purchased by Verizon Communications were renamed Altaba, which later liquidated, making a final distribution in October 2020. In September 2021, investment funds managed by

acquired 90% of Yahoo. In November 2021, Yahoo announced that it was ceasing its operations in mainland China due to an increasingly challenging business and legal environment. Previously, the company has discontinued China Yahoo! Mail on August 20, 2013.

Chief Executive Officers

Eleven chief executives and interim leaders have led the Yahoo companies since 1995. They are: * Jim Lanzone, CEO of

(2021–present) * Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Oath Inc., Verizon Media, and Yahoo (2018–2021) * Tim Armstrong, CEO of Oath Inc. (2017–2018) * Marissa Mayer (2012–2017) * Ross Levinsohn Interim (2012) * Scott Thompson (2012) * Tim Morse Interim (2011–2012) * Carol Bartz (2009–2011) *

(2007–2009) * Terry Semel (2001–2007) *

Timothy Koogle Timothy Andrew Koogle (born July 5, 1951) is an American executive who served as the first CEO and President of web company Yahoo! between 1995 and 2001. He served as the company's chairman from 1999 to 2003. He was named to the Top 25 Executives ...

(1995–2001)

Products and services

For a list of all current and defunct services offered by Yahoo, see: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services.

Data breaches

On September 22, 2016, Yahoo disclosed a

data breach A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, info ...

that occurred in late 2014, in which information associated with at least 500 million user accounts, one of the largest breaches reported to date. The United States indicted four men, including two employees of Russia's

Federal Security Service The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) RF; rus, Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (ФСБ России), Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Feder ...

(FSB), for their involvement in the hack. On December 14, 2016, the company revealed that another separate data breach had occurred in 2014, with hackers obtaining sensitive account information, including security questions, to at least one billion accounts. The company stated that hackers had utilized stolen internal software to forge

HTTP cookie HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's w ...

s. On October 3, 2017, the company stated that all 3 billion of its user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft.

Criticism

DMCA notice to whistleblower

On November 30, 2009, Yahoo was criticized by the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

for sending a DMCA notice to whistleblower website " Cryptome" for publicly posting details, prices, and procedures on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo's subscribers.

Censorship of private emails affiliated with Occupy Wall Street protests

After some concerns over censorship of private emails regarding a website affiliated with Occupy Wall Street protests were raised, Yahoo responded with an apology and explained it as an accident.

Partners and sponsorships

On September 11, 2001, Yahoo! announced its partnership with

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

for the

2002 FIFA World Cup The 2002 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Korea Japan 2002, was the 17th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial Association football, football world championship for List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams organized by ...

and

2006 FIFA World Cup The 2006 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Germany 2006, was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which had won the right to host the ...

tournaments. It was one of FIFA's 15 partners at the tournaments. The deal included co-branding the organization's websites. Yahoo! sponsored the

2012 Sundance Film Festival The 2012 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 until January 29, 2012 in Park City, Utah. 64 short films were selected for the festival from 7,675 submissions, including 27 international shorts from 3,592 submissions. Non-competition ...

. NBC Sports Group aligned with Yahoo Sports the same year with content and program offerings on mobile and desktop platforms. Yahoo announced television video partnerships in 2013 with Condé Nast, WWE, ABC NEWS, and CNBC. Yahoo entered into a 10-year collaboration in 2014, as a founding partner of Levi's Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers. The National Basketball Association partnered with Yahoo Sports to stream games, offer virtual and augmented-reality fan experiences, and in 2018 NBA League Pass. Yahoo Sportsbook launched in November 2019, a collaboration with BetMGM.

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...

acquired HuffPost from Yahoo in November 2020, in a stock deal with Yahoo as a minority shareholder. The NFL partnered with Yahoo in 2020, to introduce a new "Watch Together" function on the Yahoo Sports app for interactive co-viewing through a synchronized livestream of local and primetime NFL games. The Paley Center for Media collaborated with

to exclusively stream programs on Yahoo platforms beginning in 2020. Yahoo became the main sponsor for the Pramac Racing team and the first title sponsor for the 2021 ESport/MotoGP Championship season. Yahoo, the official partner for the September 2021 New York Fashion Week event also unveiled sponsorship for the

Rebecca Minkoff Rebecca Minkoff is a global fashion brand that was founded by brother and sister duo Rebecca Minkoff and Uri Minkoff in 2005 in New York City. The brand has retail stores in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Korea, an ...

collection via a

NFT A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the ...

space. In September 2021, it was announced that Yahoo partnered with Shopify, connecting the e-commerce merchants on Yahoo Finance, AOL and elsewhere.

References

External links

*
Yahoo! Products and Services

ALTABA and Yahoo! EDGAR Filing History
{{Authority control 1994 establishments in California 2017 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Companies in the PRISM network Internet properties established in 1994 Multinational companies headquartered in the United States Software companies based in California Software companies of the United States Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology companies established in 1994 Telecommunications companies established in 1994